TURQUIE – Beyşehir - Horseracing rules written on a 2,000-year-old tablet were uncovered in the Beyşehir district of the Central Anatolian province of Konya on May 2. The tablet, which is part of the Lukuyanus Monument, was apparently built to honor a jockey named Lukuyanus, who died at an early age in the Pisidia era. Professor Hasan Bahar from Selçuk University’s History Department said the tablet was found at the site of an ancient hippodrome. “This place was the site of a hippodrome. This tablet refers to a Roman jockey named Lukuyanus. From this tablet we can better understand that horse races and horse breeding were done in this area,” Bahar said, adding that the Hittites built such monuments for the surrounding mountains, which they believed were holy. “There are horseracing rules on the tablet. It says that if a horse comes in first place in a race it cannot participate in other races, while another horse of the winning horse’s owner also cannot enter another race. In this way, others were given a chance to win. This was a beautiful rule, showing that unlike races in the modern world, races back then were based on gentlemanly conduct,” Bahar also said. “I’ve never seen a similar tablet that contains the rules of sports and the way the race is carried out. There are sources that mention horseracing but there weren’t any that described the rules. We can say that this tablet is the oldest one describing the rules of horse racing,” he said.

ROYAUME UNI – Whitesands Bay -Archaeologists hope to find out more about people living in Wales 1,000 years ago as they excavate an early medieval chapel on a beach. Almost 50 skeletons dating to the 7th and 11th centuries have already been uncovered during two previous digs at St Patrick's Chapel in Pembrokeshire. Dyfed Archaeological Trust will carry out a final excavation of the site in the dunes at Whitesands Bay, St Davids, from 9 to 27 May. Many of the skeletons found were in 'cist' graves - long graves lined with stone slabs. Child graves were also found, decorated with layers of quartz pebbles and limpet shells. The chapel, from where St Patrick is said to have set sail for Ireland in the 5th century AD, was a ruin over 400 years ago. But its location has never been forgotten and graves with human remains have regularly been exposed by storms.

USA – Newport - The wreck of HMS Endeavour, the ship that carried Captain James Cook during several trips to the South Seas, including Tahiti and Australia, has been located: Captain Cook's famous ship has seemingly been discovered in the United States 230 years since it was sold, sunk and forgotten. The Endeavour is one of the most famous ships in naval history and was used by Captain James Cook to discover the East Coast of Australia in 1770. The last sighting of the Endeavour was around 1778 when it is believed the ship was sold, renamed the Lord Sandwich, and then used to transport British troops during the American Revolution. Archaeologists believe they have found the scuttled remains of the Endeavour in Newport Harbour, Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Marine Archaeology Project made the discovery, saying the ship was scuttled in the harbour by British forces in the lead up to the Battle of Rhode Island in 1778. The Endeavour was discovered alongside 13 other ships in a massive archaeological investigation which combined high-tech mapping of the seabed with analysis of historical shipping documents found in London. RIMAP said they were '80 to 100 per cent certain' that they remains they had discovered belonged to the Endeavour.

INDE - Dimmidi Jwala - Department of Archaeology and Museums Assistant Director V. Chittibabu based at Visakhapatnam on Sunday said that a good number of pre-historic paintings were unearthed on ‘Thene Konda” situated at Dimmidi Jwala village in Nandigam mandal of Srikakulam district. The paintings found on the hill resembled the pre-historic art of the upper Paleolithic period (40,000 years to 10,000 years) and depicted the figures of a lizard and an antelope in red colour. “These motifs reveal the fact that this art indicates the early rock paintings which belonged to upper Paleolithic period. This era is pre-historic period of human history distinguished by the development of the most primitive stone tools discovered by the historians,” says Mr. Chittibabu. These paintings have been noticed in the unoccupied area of the pre-historic man probably earmarking the location or indicating the lurking dangers of the area. “The pigment used for the prehistoric art is made of iron oxide such as hematite powder mixing with animal fats and water. This is the only early pre-historic rock paintings found in Northern Andhra Pradesh,” Mr. Chittibabu added.